[stagpanther]

Well--I got impatient and just wanted to see if the thing recorded atrae or not--so I hooked a gage up to my 260 rem AR10 build which had just enough room for a strain gage to be attached over the case mouth. Configured the software and away I went. Although you don't have to have one--it's a big advantage to use a labradar with the Pressure Trace--for reasons I'll mention in a bit.

I did my handloads since I didn't have any reference ammo on hand. Reference ammo being one that is already tested and has a known psi profile which you can use to calibrate Pressure Trace with--or check to see if your readings "are in the ballpark". I only got 6 shots off, 4 of which returned useable traces (a piece of debris had lodged in the chamber neck area and thus skewed a couple of the readings The good traces were off by about 5,000 psi compared to what QL "forecasted" but upon calling Jim at RSI to talk about my first "toe dipping" he said my results were probably pretty close to accurate for the type of charge and load--even though I had done no baseline calibration.

I've cleaned the chamber thoroughly--and in addition a box of factory ammo with a known baseline pressure (yes, I know it's going to vary due to variations in weapon and conditions) has arrived so I'll give that a go next.

Back to labradar--it's obvious that the folks at RSI saw the potential of using the large amount of projectile trajectory it records and have made good use of it in their stand-alone RSI lab software. It's taking me a bit of time figuring out the idiosyncrasies of navigating and in-putting into the program--but it is quite remarkable and I would say it's worth it's price as a stand-alone product even if you don't want to buy pressure trace. The software allows you to really drill down into labradar's information and do some very detailed analysis of each of labradar's shots--including analyzing anomalies and making statistically-based decisions on whether or not to "toss" the shot analysis. You can even do a "real world" ballistic coefficient calculation after normalizing your data and inputting environmental variables.

It's still a bit over my head at this point--but there are advanced features for analyzing the PT traces which give you a better snapshot of "the best harmonics" for your barrel and ammo that goes beyond simply shooting accurate groups and looking for pressure signs.

Tghe only real downside I've experienced so far is the difficulty of setting the system up for recording from AR's--though that's no fault of the unit itself.